It has heretofore been proposed to form a continuous spiral slice on a piece of meat such as a ham which has a center bone structure which includes a crooked bone of non-uniform diameter.
Such proposals include the Hoenselaar U.S. Pat. No. 2,470,078; the Chesley U.S. Pat. No. 3,153,436 and the Schmidt et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,370.
In each of these patents the ham is mounted on a carriage for rotation about a substantially vertical axis which corresponds to the axis of the bone, and the carriage is moved continuously along said axis. At the same time, a reciprocating knife positioned at an angle other than 90.degree., with respect to the axis of rotation of the bone, is used for slicing the ham, and as the carriage moves, the knife is advanced along the axis of rotation to form a continuous spiral slice or cut.